


pro patria mori

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Codependency, Coping, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Making Peace with the Past, Navigating 70 Years of Changes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 21:58:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1957578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The words are sandpaper, all grit and metal: poison in his mouth, in his veins.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"I’m not who I used to be, Stevie."</i></p><p> </p><p> <br/>Bucky thinks it's only him who's changed.</p><p>He's wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pro patria mori

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to **[speak_me_fair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair)** for betaing and being brilliant.

The words are sandpaper, all grit and metal: poison in his mouth, in his veins, and it hurts when his blood pumps around them because it catches, because it’s thick and full of edges and he’s bleeding on the inside, almost.

He’s bleeding.

So when Steve’s hands come offering comfort, they’re touching places where the words don’t live, where the poison doesn’t root, and it’s gorgeous, ‘course it is, because it’s Steve.

But Bucky’s broken, Bucky’s wasted, Bucky’s toxic.

 _I’m not who I used to be, Stevie_.

The words are sandpaper; poison in his mouth.

In his veins.

________________________________

In the field, when it’s raging, when it’s violent: then it’s the worst.

The Soldier is useful, there, and Bucky’s gotten better at it; he can see where the line between himself and what he was shaped into, how he was remolded and rebuilt into horror and ice: he can see the line starting to melt, starting to blur, and it’s promising, it feels like control, it feels steady in his limbs despite the poison in his veins and when he breathes and pulls the trigger in between the pumping of his heart, it’s a human thing.

It’s so human.

Behind the scope, behind the rifle, he is human.

It’s when they ask him for his hands.

The glint, the refraction of light against all his dark isn’t even what makes it wrong, what sparks the whole of it to contort: it’s the way his body moves with it, the way he dances through the destruction, the way he takes lives like he was born to it, like he was crafted by something wiser and better and bigger than his crushed up bits of a soul; crafted to annihilate, and while his comrades are standing in the end—always standing—he’s dripping in red, and he can’t look them in the eye, can’t wait for the looks on their faces, and he’s dripping in red and it’s the worst.

The field. When it’s raging.

When it’s violent.  
________________________________

In the daylight, when it’s young, when they’re running, it’s the worst.

They keep pace, and it’s perfect, it’s so perfect and it surges like molten copper through Bucky’s frame with every inhale, every footfall, every glance of sunrise on the reflecting pool; they keep pace, and it’s them, it’s _them_ and they lap once, twice, again and again to Sam’s dismay and there’s no end to the line because there is no line, there’s just them.

Just them.

But they slow, and Bucky’s wired, and when Sam’s gasping in front of them and smirking through something that makes Steve laugh the way Steve always should have, always had the heart for if not the lungs: when Sam makes Steve laugh, Bucky doesn’t understand what’s funny, and it’s sour in his stomach, in the center of his chest.

When it’s daylight and there’s laughing, and he doesn’t remember how it feels to laugh, only what it sounds like in Steve, from Steve and even that memory is wrong— 

It’s the worst.

________________________________

In the streets, in plain sight, when they’re together, it’s the worst.

Because there is a muscle memory to this thing, to the way that Steve’s hand fits in his own, and it’s not about the span of it, the strength of it now where there was fragility, where there were clear bones and taut porcelain skin draw so as to look like cheesecloth, too tight across water, across the whey from milk.

A struggle just in being, just in existing for this world.

For Bucky. For the heart and soul of James Banes.

But it’s more than just the size of those hands, or the way they fold into his own, or the way they can reach and grasp and keep in broad daylight, here. Now.

In plain sight. Together.

It’s in the way that Steve grabs for Bucky like he’s needed, when god knows that he’s not: not like this, not anymore.

It’s in the way Steve slides his fingers between Bucky’s in the way that Bucky can only guess at the finer points of the sensation when it’s on the left; the way that Bucky can’t glance up to see Steve’s discomfort in the way that a hand shouldn’t feel like that.

Not a real hand.

It’s in the way that Steve waits, hesitant, tender: in contact and still and waiting, watching, and Bucky somehow swells with the lightness of that gaze even as he shrinks for all that he knows, he _knows_ that things it’s seeking out aren’t there, anymore, aren’t in him like they used to be, and it’s a disappointment, he’s a disappointment; but it’s in the way Steve waits.

It’s in the way Steve waits before he curls his hands around Bucky’s, and it’s in the way that every time, no matter how often they’ve come to do this, come to be this way, like this, Bucky tenses. It’s in the way that every time, even though by now Bucky _knows_ ; every time he still misses the fact that Steve’s waiting before he takes Bucky’s hand, because he wants Bucky to take _his_.

Like they used to. Together.

But they’re not together. They can’t fit anymore.

Bucky’s got too many hollow places, now, for them to fit.

________________________________

In the afternoons, when they fuck, and the curtains are open.

The curtains are open, and it doesn’t matter which of them is looking up, or looking down; it doesn’t matter which chest is pressed to which back; it doesn’t matter if they’re splayed against the glass, doesn’t matter who is filling and who is full: it doesn’t matter.

Bucky can’t remember if it ever mattered.

But the thing is, Bucky thinks—the thing that _matters_ , is that when they’re up against the glass, or the wall, or the sheets: when they’re looking down at a New York that’s not New York, not anymore; when they’re clawing at pristine paint jobs over brittle drywall, when they’re panting and arching up against soft cotton that should scratch, he _needs_ it to fucking _scratch_ —but they’re moving, and it’s better than anything has any right to be, it’s more than Bucky has any right to expect, let alone to _have_ , to know as real for the way it moves in his too-thick blood, his searing veins: it’s _better_.

So there’s no fucking reason it should make him feel like he’s breaking, every time: like he’ll tear and be lost and that would be better, maybe, except that he’s scared and he can’t let it take him, can’t let it shatter and so he gasps, and he clings, and he holds himself away from the brink so that he can watch, so that he can make sure that when Steve topples there’s someone to catch him but Bucky’s broken, Bucky’s not _Bucky_ anymore and it doesn’t matter.

Bucky can’t save a goddamned thing; not like this.

When the curtains are open, it’s the worst.  
________________________________

In their bed, when it’s quiet, when it’s warm and they’re close: close enough to measure the beat of two hearts between them—Bucky can’t concentrate on anything, can’t inhabit his own body, can’t breathe in the spaces where he’s meant to, where he needs to.

He can’t.

Because he remembers what it was to share a bed, like this but not like this, and Steve’s pulse is strong now, Steve’s spine is straight now when Bucky trails his hand against the line of it: Steve can breathe deeper than maybe he should, than maybe anyone should if what they’re taking in is this, is what’s here and real now, is what’s near Bucky and of Bucky where Steve buries his face in Bucky’s shoulder, in the crook of his neck—Bucky remembers.

Bucky remembers, and fear is different now, and remembering that kind of terror, that kind of constant sensory high, absolutely unwavering vigilance in the face of losing, of losing all that mattered, and fear is different, now, and it’s the worst, it’s the worst because he can’t breathe, and for all that Steve fucking emanate heat, now, Bucky shivers, and Steve draws closer and Bucky’s chest aches against the jackhammer of his stupid, wasted, charcoaled heart and Bucky can’t, he _can’t_.

In their bed, when it’s quiet, when it’s warm and they’re close.

________________________________

In the night, when they’re sleeping.

When Steve’s sleeping. When Steve can sleep because Bucky’s near him and Steve’s enough of an idiot to think that’s a good thing, to find that a comfort: Bucky tries to fall into the rhythm of Steve’s being in sounds and gives and takes beneath the surface, the metronic whoosh, he tries.

He closes his eyes, even.

He starts. He shudders. He shakes until it hurts too much for moving, because it’s cold, and he is paralyzed, and what hurts the most is that for Steve’s heart beneath him, the only thing worth keeping; for Steve’s life around him like a bolster, like a balm that he’d made to drown: for all that the world should be right, and Bucky is free to hold to it with all of the strength he’s ever known, ever been infused with to the bone for other purposes, for other deed but none so crucial as _this_ —for all that he can do anything, have anything, he can’t.

He’s bound. He’s feeble. He’s terrified. He’d useless.

He’s dangerous. 

He blinks in the dark and stays pressed against Steve’s chest because that’s all he has, all he is: he has to keep it safe.

He has to keep it safe from himself.

In the night, when Steve’s sleeping.

________________________________

He’s staring into the eyes of the thing that will end him: he’s staring into the eyes of the enemy, and he’s breathing, and he knows.

He is James Buchanan Barnes—he is some twisted incarnation of a James Buchanan Barnes who was worth something, and he knows that he is going to die.

And in truth, if he’s honest, he’s always thought he’d be okay with it, always thought that he’d be ready, and now, especially now—with what he is, what’s he’s become, all the cracked-shell pieces of a former self that will never fit together, will never be a whole worth having, worth knowing: especially now, he’d always figured he’d let go without much fuss.

But he’s breathing heavy, and his chest hurts: not in his lungs but deeper, somewhere he can’t pinpoint but that makes him think of acid and the flash-freeze of human flesh, and for all the jagged edges and the wrong, wrong _wrong_ of _everything_ , it’s _this_ that is the worst, this that presses hard into his marrow, brands him with the knowledge that there are only so many chances and even if he claims a chance for every shrapnel-piece of his splintered soul it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t fucking matter because this is loss, this is the end of the line, and this is where he breathes in and when he breathes back out, there will be no more anything.

There will be no more Steve.

And the truth flashes for him, in that instant. The truth flashes that for all that it didn’t fit, it was better, it was the best, it was perfection because his soul is Steve, his heart is Steve, and whatever’s remembered or forgotten between those two points is that shitty orange sauce on Tony Stark’s shawarma because it doesn’t fucking matter, it never mattered, and all Bucky wants is one more chance, one more chance to come apart against the glass above a city he can’t recall with his body and Steve’s body like two foreign things that know each other because they’re bound by something _more_.

Bucky breathes in, and he knows he’s going to die.

This. 

This right here is the worst.

________________________________

Bucky breathes out.

Bucky tastes iron.

Bucky blinks.

The eyes of the enemy are wide above him, but blank, and the hole shot between them is blown, point-blank. Gruesome.

The eyes of Steve Rogers are wide, even higher: anything but blank.

 _Blazing_.

And Bucky isn’t entirely sure what it is that he bears witness to, that he sees as Steve rounds the room, as Steve snaps a neck and slits a throat and blows the chambers of a heart out through the spaces between ribs with a kind of resolve, with a kind of righteous fury that makes Bucky feel numb but not numb—makes him feel light but too faint: it’s like nothing he’s ever known, and yet he’s breathing, he’s breathing.

In.

Out.

“No survivors.” Steve’s near him, now, crouched beside him and taking stock of his condition. “Understood,” Steve murmurs into his comm. “Unavoidable collateral damage, sir.”

And Steve says it matter-of-fact-like, when it was anything but. And Steve’s chest moves against Bucky’s arm because Steve’s breathing.

In.

Out.

And Steve’s covered in blood and Bucky’s covered in blood and Bucky’s always covered in blood, Bucky is bathed in it, might as well be made of it, might as well be as red as that fucker back in the war; he’s accustomed to the red, but Steve, _Steve_.

He looks at Steve, all splattered, all stained, and it should be grotesque, should be unbearable, and good Steve, kind Steve, just and fair and selfless _Steve_ should be appalled.

Except Steve, here and now, right in front of him: Steve’s staring at him, running hands across his body, and looking at him with the kind of unwavering idiocy that means Steve would tear down the world if it meant; if it _meant_ —

Steve’s hands don’t shake for how they’d severed a spinal cord. Steve looks like he’s always suited crimson better than any other shade.

Bucky swallows, and it burns through with bile, and yet.

 _Collateral damage_.

The words should be sandpaper; should be poison in his mouth.

They’re not, though.

They’re anything but.

________________________________

In their bed, it is quiet. It is warm.

Bucky’s hands touch Steve’s body, Steve’s swift-fading bruises like he’s never known what heat was, like he’s never seen Steve’s edges and angles before.

“I’m sorry,” Steve breathes, and it’s a catch, a huff of air that tugs in Bucky’s stomach like a threat as Steve’s body tenses, seizes, before it loosens and he falls into Bucky like Bucky’s enough to hold him, like Bucky’s something solid enough for ground.

“They try to make me out to be a saint,” Steve whispers, and where Steve stares out the window, where the curtains are open and the city is bright; where Steve stares beyond, Bucky stares at Steve, and the straight line of his back, and the shallow heave of his lungs beneath the skin. 

“But I’m not, Buck,” Steve shakes his head, the rustle of it like dying trees. “Of all people, you know that I’m not and I never was, but now...”

Dying trees, maybe. Or trees coming back from the dead.

“I’m not just a kid from Brooklyn, anymore,” Steve tells him, and it’s a strained thing, a small thing, and it burrows in Bucky’s chest where Steve’s pressed close, and Steve’s trembling, Steve’s cracking down the middle but he’s holding, he’s holding, and maybe.

“And I’m not just Captain America, I’m,” Steve’s voice breaks, and his breath comes out on a sob that Bucky can’t contain, that Bucky can feel resonate and shiver through his own fault lines, threatening to give, but _maybe_.

“I’m,” Steve gasps a little, curls into himself tighter but at the same time into Bucky; into Bucky all the same.

“I just, I—” and Bucky loves that voice, because that voice is a constant.

And Bucky loves the warmth of this man, because that warmth was only stuck at the heart of him, before: just lives and breathes all through him now, and that’s exactly as it should be.

And Bucky can’t bear the way Steve’s shaking, the way Steve’s looking for a way to break, he can’t, so he turns Steve toward him, and suddenly Steve is small, Steve is young, Steve is a ball of fire in a very small space and Bucky’s kissing him like the world might end if he doesn’t, if he stops, and that’s a truth that’s never faltered. 

Not once.  
________________________________

He starts noticing things, after that.

He starts noticing that Steve avoids green foods whenever he can: all the leafy ones and the stringy ones and the ones that look like stalks. Avoids them like the plague.

It has always been Steve who made Bucky eat his veggies. Before.

Sam tells him that’s normal. Tastes change, apparently. People grow up.

Right.

He starts noticing that Steve will eat vanilla ice cream, and only vanilla ice cream, despite the godawful overabundance of options now available to him.

Steve used to get chocolate, without fail: chocolate that would stain Bucky’s strawberry when Steve leaned in to take a bite; chocolate that Bucky never minded the mark of on his cone because he got to watch the way it made Steve’s lips glisten, all sticky sugar and plump from the chill. 

Steve’s lips have never really needed any extra redness, really. And Steve still leans in to steal some of Bucky’s Rocky Road, and maybe it was never about the flavors.

Maybe.

He starts to notice—really notice, and process, and see—that Steve sleeps on his side where Steve used to sleep on his back, propped up just so to help him breathe, tucked close to Bucky’s heat in the cold, so Bucky could keep a hand on his chest and keep a tally of his breaths, keep a count of how many times Steve’s heart tripped in the night—how many times his own heart stopped for the fear of it.

Every night.

He starts to notice that Steve doesn’t smile, not like he used to. It’s a tighter smile. It’s a smile with demons in the corners, so it doesn’t stretch too wide, for fear of loosing them, for fear of relinquishing control, and Bucky knows that feeling.

Bucky knows that Steve was never suppose to know that feeling, too.

He hears, when he listens, that Steve’s pulse in the night isn’t calm, isn’t soft for all that it’s steady underneath Bucky’s ear: Steve’s sleeping, and he still with it, but the blood in him’s all tumult, all tossing and raging and rent down the seams.

He starts to see that Steve’s hands clench for no reason, all the time, except when they’re holding Bucky’s, because when they’re holding Bucky’s hands—hands, both of them, because Steve holds _both_ his _hands_ like there’s no goddamned _difference_ —but when they’re holding Bucky’s hands, they don’t clench, they tighten. They squeeze.

And they’re separate things. They’re not one and the same. It’s different.

They’re different.

Bucky’s grateful, for that.  
________________________________

“You’re not just a kid from Brooklyn,” Bucky whispers, one night, when he’s broken, but brave.

He’s brave, because there’s Steve.

He’s brave because you can be broken, and still be brave.

“You were never just a kid from Brooklyn, Steve.”

He reaches his hand, reaches for Steve’s hand and holds it, this time. He reaches. He holds.

“And you’re sure as fuck not just Captain America.” He takes their joined hands and rests them atop Steve’s chest. “Not a perfect soldier, isn’t that what you told me they said?” 

Steve doesn’t say anything, but his heart’s strong beneath their hands— _their hands_ —and when he ducks his hand to kiss Bucky’s knuckle, it’s something.

Good god, is it _something_.

“Whoever you are,” Bucky breathes out, and he squeezes the hand in his own in the beat of the heart, not between it: not like a trigger, but like a promise; “Whoever you’ve been and whoever you’re gonna be, you’re…” 

Bucky breathes, and feels himself tearing, feels himself snapping, but it’s okay, it’s okay.

He can be brave.

“You’re everything,” Bucky says, and it’s wavering, but it’s full. “And for whatever it’s worth, I’m _yours_.”

And maybe it’s a solid place, even though it’s shaking. Maybe it can be a foundation, maybe they can build from there.

Bucky hopes to god it can; _they_ can.

And Steve shivers, shudders: Steve shakes just the same, and they will. 

They can.

“That’s all I’ve ever needed to be, Buck,” Steve says, and it’s a reedy thing, a heady thing. “S’all I’ll ever need to know.”

And it’s as Steve melts into him that Bucky remembers what it’s like to be whole despite the breaking.

Whole _for_ all the breaking.

________________________________

So the words. The sandpaper words.

 _I’m not who I used to be, Stevie_.

Well, no shit. So’s no one in the whole world, ever. And maybe not everyone has gone through a wringer quite like this, maybe there’s not a single person who’s known it like _them_ , but still.

Bucky walks different. Bucky looks different. Bucky laughs different, when he remembers when to laugh, and how.

Steve smells different. Steve breathes different. His heart sounds different when they’re pressed together under the blankets, under the sheets.

It’s hard, now, to see how those things ever mattered more than what was the same, what felt the same in his chest, in his bones.

It’s hard to see it, now.

And maybe, just maybe, momentum can hold across shards. Maybe pieces can fit if their jagged parts get caught and lock tight; tighter, even, maybe, then the spaces made to match, because they fought for it. Because they _fought_.

Maybe broken things can still hold, if they have to; if they can’t imagine ever letting what it is they’re holding fall.

Steve draws, still. Steve draws more, with time, and Bucky’s punchdrunk enough to think that maybe he favors charcoal because that’s the black in Bucky’s chest, that’s the shadow on his heart and Steve still needs it. 

Steve needs it in order to be himself.

He needs _Bucky_ , in order for him to be _Steve_.

Some things don’t change. Bucky wonders if maybe that’s why everything else has to, so you can hold to those few things that are real, that won’t ever fade, and _know_.

So beyond all breathing or breaking or beating and bruising, beyond all reason or fate: you’ll know.  
________________________________

The fact is that neither of them recognize New York, anymore.

Neither of them recognize New York, and it should be terrifying. It used to be terrifying. 

It’s not, though. It feels solid. It feels familiar. It feels written in the cells inside his blood.

Bucky knows what it means to face the unknown with Steve Rogers at his side.

Bucky _knows_.

“We’re not who we used to be, Stevie,” Bucky breathes against Steve’s skin where Steve’s wraps around him, pressed flush from behind as they stare out at the skyline, as they count dots of light on the tops of buildings like stars, one for each pump of their blood, each beat of their hearts struck in time.

And they’re not. They’re not who they used to be, and it means more than loss, now, he thinks: means more than what was taken, what was wasted, what was robbed.

It means more, it means _this_ and Steve’s mouth opens against Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky hopes Steve feels it, knows as deeply as Bucky does, now, that this is what they are, this is what they have, and it’s everything, for all that it is and isn’t, it is _everything_.

“Thank god for that,” Steve murmurs into him, and Christ, yes. 

Bucky’s breath gets the better of him as it crackles, as it shakes and gets caught in his throat, but Steve’s hands on his chest, above the beating of his heart and Steve is behind him, pressed into him, all around him, unwavering, and this is what they have, this is what it means to change, because what they were could never be here, would have never known this.

This.

And Steve kisses Bucky like he’s some wonder of the world unearthed from ice and hate, and it’s warm and it’s bright and it’s home and Bucky shivers, comes apart for it, and he doesn’t fail Steve for sinking, for falling: he doesn’t, because Steve falls into him, just the same.

And they’re different, they’ve changed, they are broken.

But somehow, now, being broken means that they can recognize the cracks, they read each other’s thin spots, they shore the weak spaces for how they feel them, borne between.

And somehow, like this, they strong enough for all that matters.

They bear each other up.

**Author's Note:**

> I hang out on [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com) sometimes, if you're interested.


End file.
